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Recent Ethernet speed issues - RBR850
My wife and I both work from home and do several video calls per day, often at the same time. I previously had an RBR50 system (wifi 5) that I had used for years and had zero issues with for wired/et...
I see, that had reared it's ugly head again. Ya, there is a very LONG post thread over on DSLReports that was started many years ago about a Intel vulnerability with PUMA chip sets, one SB6190 was at the forefront of this discussion. There were other brands as well effected.
See if Spectrum supports any of the NETGEAR CM series of modems or maybe try a Motorola branded model. Not a fan of Arris or Hitron though I have one however it's only for phone services with the ISP.
It's hard to tell on the RBR's internal ookla test as it doesn't show me any progress. But I get a much higher download result there (1100-1150Mbs) there vs. pretty much any way I run the same ookla test on my pc through ethernet meaning browser, installed app, etc. I did try cloudfare's speedtest which gives a lot more detail (https://speed.cloudflare.com/) which showed some interesting results. Down speeds were anywhere from 200-500Mbs but Packet Loss varied greatly. I've run the test 20ish times and seen packet loss as high as 1%. I can't test directly connected to the modem yet as my wife is on calls but will do so shortly. And yes, I did get much faster speeds connecting directly to the modem from my pc with the ookla test though I think the cloudfare test will give me a much better picture.
I did do some research more specific to the modem itself (Hitron Docsis 3.1 with Spectrum firmware) and it seems several folks have issues with that particular model which some attribute to the chipset (Puma 6 or 7? Not familiar). One user even said he specifically had issues with an Orbi with that modem, though it was the RBRE960. He had tested an eero and an Asus router and neither had the same speed drop. There was some data around sustained download speeds which seems to match what I'm seeing on speed tests run through devices connected through the Orbi. I'm going to try to see if I can swap the modem out for one with a different chipset or maybe even find a used modem on ebay or something to see if that helps. I'm so happy with the wifi performance on this Orbi that I'm not ready to give up on it yet without trying another thing or two.
I see, that had reared it's ugly head again. Ya, there is a very LONG post thread over on DSLReports that was started many years ago about a Intel vulnerability with PUMA chip sets, one SB6190 was at the forefront of this discussion. There were other brands as well effected.
See if Spectrum supports any of the NETGEAR CM series of modems or maybe try a Motorola branded model. Not a fan of Arris or Hitron though I have one however it's only for phone services with the ISP.
Quick update then I'll mark this as solved.
So I swapped out my EN2251 at Spectrum but they gave me a ES2251 (rather than the EU or ET with the different chipsets). I still gave it a shot since that was all that they had but not surprisingly, the results were the same.
Then today was randomly searching ebay, amazon warehouse, etc. for docsis 3.1 modems and sifting through countless listings for EN and ES modems, I ran across a guy selling his Netgear CM1200 for cheap which is supported by Spectrum. I just got it home and plugged in and called Spectrum to activate it as it wouldn't activate through their site. They did have to "manually" add the MAC but once they did I was up and running. I now get the expected full speed for wired devices (900+ Mbs), tested a 1G download and it was 80-90 MB/s as it was before, streaming seems stable. Hooray!
So still not sure if it was the modem's connection to Spectrum or the Orbi's connection to the modem but regardless, the modem was seemingly the issue. There are tons of Netgear, Arris, Motorola, etc. modems for sale on ebay in the $30-$50 range. If anyone is having similar issues I would recommend giving one of them a shot. Just make sure their model number is on the list here - https://www.spectrum.net/support/internet/compliant-modems-charter-network
Thanks again for your help FURRYe38 and hopefully this thread helps someone else some day.
Glad you got it working. And the details. Not a big fan of Hitron modems. Be sure to save off a back up configuration to file for safe keeping. Saves time if a reset is needed.
https://kb.netgear.com/000062080/How-do-I-back-up-the-configuration-settings-on-my-Orbi-WiFi-System
Enjoy. 📡